INNOVATION POLICIES, START-UP COMPANIES AND SUPPORT ENTITIES. PRELIMINARY REGIONAL ANALYSIS OF THE INNOVATIVE COMPANIES’ DEVELOPMENT IN ITALY

The Italian economic context has witnessed, together with the other EU member states, a relevant growth of the attention towards innovative start-up companies. In the last 15 years there has been an increase in the number of centres for the development and support of innovative start-ups. Such centres (incubators, accelerators, info points, development agencies), created by governmental institutions, private entities and universities, have helped increase the number of start-up companies in Italy and to accelerate and modernise the approach towards the theme of innovation and technology transfer from the research to the market. This paper analyses the data contained in the national companies’ register, in particular the section created by Law n. 221/2012, dedicated to innovative start-up companies, in order to find and evaluate the connections between the number and the nature of the innovative businesses established in the past few years, their place of birth, the presence of support structures in their regions of residence and the presence of other variables such as education level, IPR, R&D investments.